Catalina's Jazz Club at 25

SOMETIMES culture works in strange ways. Twenty-five years ago this month, Catalina Popescu, who had emigrated to LA from an authoritarian Romania, a country without an especially rich jazz tradition, met the horn player Buddy Collette, and within a week had opened a jazz club.

A quarter century later, Catalina's on Sunset is still open. With the demise of the beloved Jazz Bakery (soon to rise again), it's become the most consistent place to see major national acts in Los Angeles.

Here is my piece in today's LA Times about some of musicians who made Popescu want to open a jazz club and keep it going through good times and bad.

Happy birthday to the club, which celebrates with a bash on Monday night.